Katherine Legge's Quest For An IndyCar Ride

At the final race of the year on the IZOD IndyCar Series trail, it's customary to see drivers walking around and looking for an appropriate job for the coming season.  There are a few seats available for next year, particularly with new engines and chassis supplanting a familiar Dallara/Honda/Firestone grouping that's been in place since 2006.

Because of this teams are looking not only for a good racer but also someone who can test and help develop a car.  That's where a breadth of experience can come in handy - whether in the Indy cars or with other series.  

One of the drivers talking to team owners at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was Katherine Legge, who most recently has been an Audi factory driver in the DTM (German Touring Car) championships.  

Legge should be familiar to American racing fans for her efforts in the Toyota Atlantic championship and the Champ Car World Series, where she met far more success than that other female driver, Danica Patrick.  The elegant and charming Briton, however, first came to the United States under compromising circumstances.

There was a time when Kathryn Nunn, wife of engineer and Champ Car team owner Morris Nunn, was trying to put together a Firestone Indy Lights team comprised of woman drivers.  Together with Lyn St James, she organized a - for lack of a better term - gong show at Texas Motor Speedway and invited six female race car drivers to show up.

A seventh appeared - it was Legge.  Eventually feeling sorry for the driver who paid her own way to show up for testing, a driver who had never seen an oval - much less the daunting 1.5-mile Texas oval - Nunn gave her time in a car when the other girls were doing PR exercises.  

In no time at all, Katherine Legge was comfortable in the Lights car, lapping at speeds as good or better than the invited competitors.  She was finally allowed to talk with the media, give feedback to the engineers, interact with the nonplussed group that she barged into and looked ready to go racing.  But alas, the promise of a ride never happened for any of the seven racers and Nunn folded her tents.

Legge moved to Toyota Atlantic with Polestar Racing and won three races, took five podiums and finished third in the championship, becoming the first female to win a major open wheel race in North America.  She elevated to Champ Car for Kevin Kalkhoven, where she earned six top-10 results with a best finish of sixth, achieved on the Long Beach street circuit and the daunting Milwaukee Mile oval.  Still she's better known for her crash at Road America, an amazing incident where the driver, incredibly, walked away from the debris with only bumps and bruises.  

Future races in a merged INDYCAR series weren't possible, so Legge became an Audi factory driver in DTM, the world's top touring car series.  She also competed in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, had a complete Formula One test with Minardi (before they became Toro Rosso) and earned pole position in Formula Renault at Oulton Park in the UK.

All those pursuits are well and fine for any driver, but Legge's heart belongs to Indy cars.  She's been at many races this year reminding team owners that - not only does she exist - she's a viable candidate for any team that wants and needs a driver that can give feedback, can race hard and bring home great results.  All while having the glamour of an elegant young woman.

As for her travails, marching through paddocks and pit areas throughout the 2011 IZOD IndyCar Series season, "This year has been very difficult for me and I have worked harder than ever," Legge told me.  "I have learnt so much about myself that I am positive I will get back in the car a much better driver and that it will have been a positive thing," to pound the pavements of race tracks throughout the USA.

"If getting a ride was based on how much you want it," she mused, "I would already be driving an Indy car.  I believe in myself and the people I surround myself with, and I am sure it will all come together soon."  

© 2011 Anne Proffit